Global Connect! Gender Justice Writing Project

Rusia Naureen Mohiuddin was born in Bangladesh in 1973, the year that two important cases dominated the United States news: Roe vs. Wade and the start of the Watergate hearings. She was born an identical twin, the pair born in the middle of four siblings. She says her journey towards social justice causes came before she was 13 years old.

NEW YORK–"In Mexico, many girls do not have to play at being prostitutes. They are forced by organized crime into prostitution", says Silvia Calderon, with a firm voice.
The dogs barking and women whispering do not distract Silvia. The Mexican mother tells her story via cell phone from a street in Mexico City.
"The injustices are already part of everyday life in this country," she states with anger.

Midnight passes and it is intensely cold on Roosevelt Avenue. On the corner of 82 Street, Maria Gomez, a-39-year-old Mexican, carefully cleans the space occupied by her food cart.
With water and "jabón Roma," she brushes the fat off the stove that comes from the meat she cooks to prepare tacos.

A close link between poverty and migration exists. Without employment, education, adequate food plus a machista culture, indigenous women face a challenge. Crossing the border may be the only way to get a better life.

(NEW YORK)–"For those of us who pick up the call, we need to take care of ourselves" says playwright Nina Mercer as she embarks on a journey to pick up a call her ancestors made many years ago. Tracing her mother’s lineage back to the middle passage, she founded Ocean Ana Rising in honor of a relative named Ocean Ana after her birth on the ocean during the transatlantic slave trade.

In her first blog Global Connect! writer Zaira Cortés uses one case of domestic violence in her community to talk about domestic violence against all women to raise awareness of the problem and to encourage women to report incidents.

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It is being hailed as the most progressive state policy so far, going further than New Jersey, California and Rhode Island in various respects. But its showcase potential won’t be tested until the program gets going in 2018.